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Post-crises response strategies: a combined model to manage brand...

Post-crises response strategies: a combined model to manage brand crises

Brand crises are unexpected events negatively affecting a brand’s perceived ability to deliver expected benefits and consequently reducing brand equity. Post-crisis response strategies may be implemented by companies in their effort to restore brand confidence and diminish the effect of reputational threat. Hence, they act as a critical determinant of the actual impact of the crisis on consumers’ evaluations and consequently on brand equity. In order to help crisis managers in this challenging task, previous studies in the field of crisis management have conceptualized several models and theories providing mechanisms to anticipate consumers’ reactions to a crisis and proposing different approaches for the company to respond. A contingency-based view suggests that the effectiveness of a crisis response depends on various contingent factors, which may mediate and moderate consumers’ post-crisis brand evaluations. Thus, moderators such as brand familiarity, a company’s reputation for CSR activities and brand identification may be enhanced and exploited by companies in order to implement a more appropriate and cost-effective response strategy.